(soft music) (water burbling) - [Tommy Baker] About 66% of our veteran population is 55 years or older.

- I ended up retiring a lot earlier than I expected to due to medical issues.

My doctor, he says, "It's not about whether you live or die.

You're not gonna die."

He says, "It's who you are at the other side of this."

- Aging is a critical aspect of the experience of PTSD.

Changes in structure, functioning of the brain overall absolutely could lead to an exacerbation of symptoms later in life.

- [Mary] A lot of women experience PTSD while serving in the military.

- Whether they serve four or 40 years, all of those veterans have VA benefits, but so few apply for it.

- A lot of people don't identify as a veteran, females especially.

(people chattering) - When I first got out, I didn't even know I could file a claim or where to go to or what to do initially.

- You getting benefits is not gonna take it outta anybody else's pocket, it has nothing to do with it.

You earn those benefits, you and your family, please take advantage of them.

- The major reason why veterans don't apply?

We don't think we're worthy.

(water burbling) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) - [Kathy Mattea] Major funding for "Aging Matters" is provided by the West End Home Foundation, enriching the lives of older adults through grant making, advocacy, and community collaboration; the Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of the Middle Tennessee community; and the HCA Healthcare Foundation, on behalf of TriStar Health.

(soft music fades) (projector whirring) (pensive music) - I joined in my junior year of high school.

I went to basic training bootcamp in the summer of 1979.

And then I was in the reserves when 9/11 hit.

I remember sitting in my civilian clothes and doing my civilian job, on a conference call, when one of the guys on the conference call said, "Hey, a plane just flew into one of the towers in New York."

- [Bystander] Oh my God!

(people yelling) - And then somebody said, "Another one got hit."

And my life, as well as my family's life, changed in that moment.

Even though I knew I wasn't gonna be kicking in doors and getting bad guys, I just couldn't sit there.

I deployed with the 1st Theater Sustainment Command, ended up in Iraq for a period of time.

And where I was, in Balad, there's a big burn pit.

We create, like most Americans do, a lot of garbage.

Usually we're in austere areas and we basically build a city, and we need to dispose of our garbage.

Well, the locals aren't set up for that.

They usually don't even have their own system.

So we pile it up and burn it.

And when I say burn it, I mean everything, plastics, whatever we can.

Well, the one at Balad, it was big as a large building, and it was constantly burning stuff, and we were breathing it.

(music fades) ♪ Welcome back ♪ ♪ Where you belong ♪ - January 1st, 2013, was my first time I was totally a civilian since April of 1979.

(people clapping) There's a thing called a Transition Assistance Program.

What they do is they go over lots of things.

They'll do things like, hey, here's how civilians write a resume, lots of little things like that, but they put you through a complete physical, probably the most intensive physical you've had.

And you're encouraged to ask questions.

But if you don't speak up, something that's a little issue now, that you don't think about in 10, 15 years, becomes a big one.

And I'm the poster child for that.

When I went to retire, people said, "You need to file a VA claim."

And I said, "No, I don't, I'm in good health."

(soft music) - All of those veterans, whether they serve four or 40 years, all of those veterans have VA benefits, but so few apply for it.

And you go, why?

Well, okay, part of it may be a lack of awareness.

So, maybe you were unaware that those benefits existed.

Another issue may be, gee, the paperwork just seemed unending.

But the major reason why veterans don't apply?

We don't think we're worthy.

We're leaders.

We eat last, you know?

The military doesn't owe me anything.

It was a privilege to serve.

You know, I'm doing okay, because we all know people missing arms and legs, we all know people, and it's in our DNA as leaders that we don't wanna deprive them.

They need it more than I need it.

- You getting benefits, it's not gonna take it outta anybody else's pocket, it has nothing to do with it.

You earned those benefits, you and your family, no matter when you served, whether you were in a combat theater or not.

If you've got a 214 and you've got active duty service, you need to be calling and checking out and seeing what you may be missing out on because there's a lot of benefits out there that veterans earn.

The Tennessee Department of Veterans Services, our mission is to provide passionate advocacy for veterans of all eras, to provide informed outreach, and then to provide a pristine final resting place.

We have 13 field offices.

Those offices are manned by our Veterans Service Officers.

They provide claims assistance for our veterans, you know, that can help get 'em signed up for VA healthcare, they can educate 'em about the VA home loans.

We try to make sure that we walk the veteran or their family through the entire process.

We're a state agency, we're not the VA, and we wanna make sure that as a state agency, we serve Tennessee's veterans and their families.

But we are there to educate veterans.

Whether it's federal benefit or a state benefit, we're there to help 'em get 'em both.

- A VSO is a person who helps veterans file their claims, get their benefits.

They're there to assist them in any way that they need help navigating through the VA and the VA process, which can be very daunting at times.

We had a master sergeant when I was in the Air Force who told us, "You will need your medical records at some point, and you will file a claim probably with the VA." And I'm like, "Do what?"

And it didn't really resonate with me until I got out and I started asking around.

And at that time, it wasn't as good as it is now.

It was very frustrating.

I went and saw a VSO here locally, and they handed me a bunch of forms and said, "Fill these out and let me know how it goes."

I didn't even know where to send it off to, I didn't know what I was doing.

I file 13'ed it.

When we go to package a claim, we try to include as much information as we can to substantiate the claim and show all the evidence to back up that service-connected condition.

And if more of that would've been submitted on my behalf, it wouldn't have taken me as long as it did.

And that's why I became a VSO, 'cause I didn't want anybody to go through what I've been going through for the past 30 years.

- I know some people that maybe because of some initial experiences they just don't want to go back down that path.

But I would just encourage 'em to give us another chance and let us help 'em get what they've earned.

Eventually I succumbed and I sat down with a Veterans Service Officer in Nashville, and he wrote about nine things down that were about me, and one of those things was headaches.

Yeah, everybody has headaches.

I have headaches.

They're probably just sinus headaches.

I get 'em every once in a while.

Well, fast forward seven years later and I have my first seizure.

That's where they find the meningioma in my head.

My doctor, who is a former Marine, he says, "You're gonna live."

He says, "It's not about whether you live or die.

You're not gonna die."

He says, "It's who you are at the other side of this.

Are you gonna be disabled?"

'Cause you just don't know what you don't know.

And as it turns out, I'm pretty much okay.

The scar tissue now causes the seizures, which means I'm on Keppra for the rest of my life, which is a drug that controls seizures.

But it also has some side effects as far as forgetfulness and things of that nature.

So...

But if I had not wrote headaches, there would've been no service connection.

So they connected my meningioma to the burn pits.

Otherwise it probably wouldn't have happened.

- Outreach.

We had 189 outreach events last year.

And I wanna tell you, outreach is this.

We have an outreach cell.

They're focused on getting that message to the 440,000 veterans we have in our state.

It requires us as a state agency to say, hey, here's what's going on in the department, here's what's changing at the VA, that, you know, somebody might have filed a claim 10 years ago, it didn't work then, but now there's a new rule in place.

Oh, they need to go back and relook that.

If you don't know, it does you no good, right?

And so it's our major challenge, is to get the word out.

And we're trying to do it in every way we can.

And there's about 20 communities out there that have either veteran coalitions, veteran councils, they're called different things, great resources.

There are some things that they provide at the local level that we don't provide here in state government.

Take advantage of that.

There's so many benefits inside of those, 'cause they've partnered with community leadership and community agencies that provide services that my department just don't have the ability to provide.

And so I would just say, you know, don't give up if we don't have what you need.

Connect to some of those local coalitions because we have started a true effort of trying to, hey, say, "We just wanna be your partner.

You're doing a great job.

You're doing a job we can't do.

Let us partner with you, let us get your message out, and in turn you help us get our message out."

And the veterans and their family members end up winning when we can all produce that kind of environment.

(people laughing) - My name's April Childers.

I'm the executive director of Middle Tennessee Veterans Coalition.

We wanna get started with, do we have any veterans in need?

We advocate for veterans through education, collaboration, you know, community collaboration, and advocacy.

We do that through town halls, we try to have events.

This year, our hopes is to start like a, at least a quarterly education series.

So, because there's so much misinformation out on the streets, like, "Oh, my neighbor told me."

Well, we want them to hear the facts.

What we really try to do is we try to bring services to our area because we are a rural area and sometimes just getting to services is a struggle.

So that way, when we have a veteran in need, we can pick up the phone and say, "Hey, Lieutenant Norris, I've got this going on.

What can you do to help me?"

"Hey, Operation Stand Down."

So we've got the resources.

And that's, I think, part of the challenge, is sometimes you don't know what to ask.

And finding the right person to ask it to is another challenge.

The VFW, the American Legion, they have their memberships, you know?

They have certain, like VFW, Veterans of Foreign War, if you didn't serve overseas, then you can't join the VFW.

The American Legion's different.

The Vietnam Veterans is different.

(laughs) So, and they all have their membership dues and things like that.

We don't have dues.

What we wanna do is we want to get those organizations and the community leaders that, the people that run across veterans when they're in most need, those are the people that we want to get to the table.

So that way when we have a veteran in need, we can say, "Hey, you do this.

We've got a veteran in need, you know, let's get you connected."

In the jails, they weren't asking that question either, if they had a veteran status, but that has changed recently.

What we're finding is that a lot of people don't identify as a veteran.

And in their mind, either because they didn't serve overseas, it wasn't during a time of war, females especially do not identify a lot of times as veterans.

- There was a lot of women when I first got out that did not consider themselves veterans, even though they may have served 10, 12, 14, 16 years.

I joined in 1974, July 1st, 1974, and retired in August 1st of 1995.

When I joined, the Women's Army Corps was still in existence.

When the Women's Army Corps was integrated into the regular army, there was a whole lot of pushback from just the general population, and the women were really not treated that well.

It was really, really tough.

You really had to do twice as good as anybody else to really make a difference.

And I remember being on duty, getting my coffee early in the morning, and the supply sergeant says, "You know, if you'll be nice to me, I'll take it easy on you today."

And my 18-year-old self said some things that were really not repeatable, and I painted curbs all day, painted curbs yellow, and this was at Fort Bliss, Texas, when it was 100 degrees outside.

A lot of women experienced PTSD while serving in the military, not because of the combat that we saw but by other things.

- If we look at the natural recovery process, people have an opportunity to feel their feelings, they have support that they need from a spouse or people in their family or their support network.

PTSD tends to take over when they don't have an opportunity to look at the feelings and thoughts that they experienced, or if blame takes over, or if they avoid the reminders and things that actually are associated with that.

They get stuck in that process from recovering and getting better.

- [Mary] I was realizing that I was really angry, and it was coming out, I mean, it was coming out at work, it was coming out at home, it was, you know?

But nobody ever asked me to, I didn't think they were listening or even wanted to know.

- By talking about the blockades to getting better, we can identify what they are.

And one of the big ones, especially in military culture, is you don't seek help.

You check the box, you move through and do what needs to be done to continue and accomplish the mission.

If I ask for help, it's gonna be perceived as a sign of weakness.

And we know in our work that nothing can be further from the truth, that it's actually a sign of strength.

- So I lost a little bit of myself.

And it took a long time to actually get that back, and it really was by connecting with other veterans.

- [Scott] When you have that sense of a shared bond, being able to stay connected with people that truly understand where you're coming from is part and parcel to healing.

- If it were not for that connection, it would be so much harder, so much harder.

- [Scott] We are designed genetically and predisposed to heal.

We're a resilient species, and we are geared towards healing and survival.

And if we have not had the opportunity, if the brain hasn't had the opportunity to recover, we need a space and an opportunity to make sense of the senselessness of what has happened to us.

- I was lucky enough to have a group of women that I had bonded with at the VA, and we would have a meeting once a month, and then that was the kind of therapy, because I could go in there just as frustrated as I could be and come out laughing and joking and really, like, the stress was off my shoulders, because I didn't have to explain anything, I didn't have to explain myself, I didn't have to explain what I was trying to say because they got it.

It didn't matter what branch of service they were, they were sisters in arms.

(people laughing and singing) - We're pretty close-knit in the military, and we don't get the opportunity a lot of times to really get involved in community because we're moving around, PCSing or, you know, transitioning from location to location.

Now you're a permanent (laughs) part of a community.

You're like, okay, what do I do now?

You know, other than get a job and to, you know, continue to either work and take care of your family if you have a family, that's important.

But then what about the rest of it?

I came here in '21.

Naturally, I was gonna be connected to the VFW and DAV.

And once I started attending, then I realized the conversation was around none of the groups having a permanent home.

So depending on what group you're in, your meeting place could be somewhere, anywhere around the area.

And a few of us got together, decided that we should probably pursue getting a place where all the groups would meet together.

We ended up having a meeting with the county commission.

This facility here, which at the time was the county maintenance building, was becoming available because they were moving out.

So, we came over here, and we got a lot of our veteran volunteers, family members, and everybody together to start cleaning this place up because it was trash, (chuckles) but it was a maintenance building, right?

We started the process of actually having a facility.

We became a functional place where veterans can come and get a sense of community.

The county wanted to put the Veterans Service Officer here, their full-time employee that helps veterans.

And on this side of the building is the resource center.

We became the Tri-Star Veterans Resource Center.

Resource center, instead of community center, speaks more to what we do.

Its purpose is to help veterans find the resources that they need and connect them to the resources that they need.

And we will make sure our veterans are connected to the VA, that when they need benefits help or guidance, we can send them down a hall to the Veterans Service Officer.

And, even more importantly, I think, or in addition to, we saw a bigger picture.

There's community partnerships that you can join as well as veterans service organizations.

And then we have the clinics in the community where a lot of times we have the vet centers.

So we partner here at the center with all of those to make sure that veterans can get not only the resources that they need but feel like they're part of the community again as well, or join the community.

There's just so many activities out there, and so much that veterans can do and participate in, that we wanna be that one stop where they can come and find out, hey, what's going on?

What's out there?

Here's what I need.

And even though we're not a direct service organization, we can at least put 'em in the right place where they need to be and connect them to the right people.

- Bob.

- Good to see ya, man.

We missed you.

We missed you last week at fishing.

- It was too cold.

- Too cold?

Aw.

Good guy like you, I'm glad you're here.

We're gonna tie these leaders, and you can try 'em the best you can- - Okay.

- And then we'll just take it from there, all right?

- All right.

- [Keith P.] We have a group called Healing Waters that meets here, and Healing Waters teaches veterans free fly fishing.

They build the flies here, they teach 'em from the ground up, and then they go out on the waters around the county, around the state, actually, and even out of state, and they fly fish.

(lighthearted music) - Project Healing Waters is a nonprofit organization that works with disabled veterans, and we use fly fishing and the aspects of fly fishing for rehabilitation purposes.

We have four basic core principles.

Tie flies, of course, fly casting, we offer a program for rod building, and then we also teach 'em the aspects of fishing, reading the water, tying their own leaders.

We also cover the hydronics, which is the flow of the water.

And it's interesting when we work with them, we'll find out that one veteran loves to tie flies, and there's another veteran, he'd build every rod he could if you would let him.

But then every one of them love one thing and that's fishing.

(laughs) We fish for maybe an hour or two hours.

And then after a while, you'll see the guys start going away from the water.

They will sit at a picnic table, they will open up their lunchbox, and then fellowship.

And I think that is just as much to them as the actual fishing.

It's a way to still keeping that military bond and that brother connection.

- [Veteran] Make it shine.

- When I retired, I was looking for a activity to volunteer my time.

And being a fisherman and loving the outdoors, I decided that this might be something I could really donate my time to.

I love to see a guy catch his first fish.

But to see the transformation of his life, to see him grow to where he feels more comfortable about himself, his surroundings, and the confidence, to me, that's the gratification.

Yeah, the fishing is great, but when you have an opportunity to change someone's life, it's really a blessing, that it's very rewarding.

And that's my biggest, of course, to see 'em catch a big fish, I love that too.

(chuckles) (gentle music) You can never, ever repay these guys for what they've done, and these ladies, you can't.

But the thing is, you can do a little bit at a time.

- I finally realized why I did what I did for 30 years.

I actually wanted to help other people, and that's what makes me tick.

I'm helping as best I can the population that I'm most familiar with, which is other veterans.

- Nobody talks to a veteran like another veteran.

And there are things that civilians just don't understand.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Kathy Mattea] Major funding for Aging Matters is provided by the West End Home Foundation, enriching the lives of older adults through grant making, advocacy, and community collaboration; the Jeanette Travis Foundation, dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of the Middle Tennessee community; and the HCA Healthcare Foundation, on behalf of Tristar Health.

(lighthearted music)